Country Chart News - The Top 30 Digital Singles: The Week of May 1 2013: George Jones Hits Chart; Darius and FGL Tops

The story this week is certainly centered around the power of sad news and the loss of a star and how it impacts digital sales, even late in a week as George Jones places four songs on this week's chart, with a single track inside the Top 30 while FGL & Darius Rucker both sell over 100,000 singles each.

Florida Georgia Line and Darius Rucker sell 100,000 or more digital track downloads each to place #1 and #2 on this week’s chart with “Cruise” and “Wagon Wheel,” respectively. Meanwhile The weekend sales helped George Jones score perhaps his first-ever Top 15 Digital single on this chart.

The Top 5 remained the same this week so Florida Georgia Line’s remix with Nelly helped “Cruise” remains #1 this week and the single has surpassed the Triple Platinum mark with the “Cruise” Remix helping the last million or so downloads. Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel” remains a big-selling hit with sales now topping 900,000 total while Blake Shelton’s “Boys ‘Round Here” is proving to be equally popular with fans. Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift’s Gold-selling single “Highway Don’t Care” is #4 with Miranda Lambert’s nearly 900,000-sold single “Mama’s Broken Heart” sits at #5. It continues to march towards a Platinum certification, a remarkable achievement for any artist’s fourth or fifth single from an album project.

Luke Bryan’s single “Crash My Party” has sold over 300,000 singles in just three weeks and one day on the chart while last week’s Country radio airplay #1 hit “Downtown” sits at #8 with total sales now over 684,000 copies sold. In between those singles is Florida Georgia Line’s other single on this week’s chart, the current Top 2 Country radio airplay hit “Get Your Shine On,” a song that has now sold 843,000 digital single downloads. Sitting at #9 is Hunter Hayes with his 221,000 selling Top 30 Country radio airplay hit “I Want Crazy” while recent Radio #1 hit Blake Shelton’s Platinum selling “Sure Be Cool If You Did” has now sold over 1.1 million digital downloads.

George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today” lands in the Top 15, first of four Jones singles to appear in top 200 chart.

George Jones passed away Friday afternoon but that didn’t stop fans from rushing to buy his albums with “He Stopped Loving Her Today” screaming into the Top 15 with over 34,000 fans buying the song considered by many to be the greatest Country song ever written and performed by the purest Country singer to ever exist. “Finally Friday,” “White Lightning,” “Choices” and “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” also appeared in the Top 100 chart. Lay Antebellum’s “Wanted You More” appears on the chart after show front-runner Sarah Simmons performed the track on NBC’s “The Voice.”

Outside The Top 30 Notes:

Brett Eldredge is at 32 with sales for Top 30 Country radio hit “Don’t Ya” at nearly 120,000.

Chris Young’s Top 5 hit “I Can Take It From There” crosses the 202,000 sales mark.